[I'm diagnosed as having Late Stage Lyme with co-infections, one of them being a reactivated herpesvirus. I wasn't sure to post it here or in the "alternative diagnosis" section, I'm sorry if it should have been posted there instead.] In the category 'afraid to ask but important to ask', does anyone here also have spontaneous bruises? Is this a known phenomenon in ME/CFS? Since the beginning of my illness, I have spontaneous bruises on mostly my legs. At first I thought they were just normal bruises that I missed getting due to severe cognitive issues, but I wasn't sure as they became also more frequent than before while I really couldn't remember bumping those places. When my ear lobe turned dark purple I knew I wasn't imagining things, so I went to a GP with it with the well-known result of getting dismissed. For me this has been part of my symptoms for all the time I was ill. I get them mostly on my legs, but at times my lower arms get one when I have tried to wash my hair myself or raised my arms to get something from a high shelf. Together with my standing tachycardia, they get worse after for example having had the flu, so they are a bit of a measure on how I am doing. Sometimes they are obvious burst blood vessels, creating a bump, often there isn't. They also don't behave/look like normal bruises, in that they can start brown before getting very dark purple, and they can take weeks to go away (but I get the impression it goes faster when I am in bed). Getting an actual bruise next to these spots looks and behaves different I think (with more yellow and green tints for example and quicker healing.) Unfortunately, in the last years frequency has become much worse. It's currently not unusual to always have them, and have several at a time (like last week having three on one leg). A while back I had more than nine at the same time on my legs. And frankly, they scare me. Not just the increasing frequency, but also because if that happens there, where else in my body might that happen too? Plus my legs seem to be getting places with permanent damage where you can still see dark places under the skin where bursts have been. It has once been explained to me as the result of stiff contracted blood vessels not dilating fast enough when my tachycardia kicks in, creating pressure and therefore bursts. It fits what happens (they often happen after tachycardia), but I'm taking medication for the tachycardia that slows my heart rate, and it still happens. A lot. Since reading a bit about blood clots, rigid red blood cells and possible red blood cell deformity, I wonder if they might also be a sort of blood traffic jam. Anyway, sorry for getting rambley. I'm finding it an uncomfortable topic. But I just did a spontaneous search and saw @Invisible Woman , @MerryB and @Skycloud describe something similar, making them the first people I know who might be having the same as me, so I decided to ask who else has the same thing happening.
@Arvo , I get the same thing, also primarily in my legs. One of these days I need to have a GP opine on it. In the meantime, I just assume it has something to do with low platelets, which I have periodically, and which I ascribe to ongoing babesiosis. Which may or may not be correct. My question to you: You state you have late stage Lyme; were you tested for co-infections like at least two major strains of babs?
When more active I have a tendency to get covered in bruises, both on legs and arms/hands, sometimes other places. I have always put it down to walking into things or unnoticed accidents. I also have a load of shallow scratches on my back, which I think are caused by soft cotton shirts. The bruises can hang around for many months, but given that cuts/graises/etc. also take a geological age to heal (I have several bits of surface 'damage' on my ankles/feet from incidents before the pandemic that still haven't disappeared) doesn't surprise me.
By coincidence, this morning I woke with grape sized swelling (hematoma?) on my right upper eyelid. I have occasional bruises on my legs and arms, but it did not occur to me that they were not the the result of a knock or bang I had missed, until several years ago I woke with a black eye. It was hard to think I had had a bang or knock to my eye without being aware of it, so I wondered if it had been the result of a burst blood vessel, which also raised the possibility that the other bruises were not the result of unnoticed knocks. Today’s swelling was painless and only a little red, and while I was debating with myself what to do it started going down. Within an hour the swelling was largely gone but it has left me again with black eye, this time in the other eye.
My issue is quite different to yours in most ways - in fact the only thing is that I have always bruised a lot and it is worse the worse my ME is and a locum had mentioned the number of bruises on my leg when I went about something else (I stupidly made a joke about an ikea bedframe in my awkwardness and we both left it). I'd had blood tests not long before that and remember going through the results and, despite them never being flagged, noticing the thing that stuck out was platelets being half or less of what the reference range I looked up was. I have never got any further or mentioned any of this though because I haven't had a point in my life where other things haven't been bigger priorities or I was in a position to 'lay out all I had' to any medic etc. Anyway, doesn't add anything for you probably but mine aren't brown, always purple/green and I have got huge ones for a decade from when I wear reasonably tight jeans or am itching the top of my thigh. Like really big ones 4 inches long, just from an itch (if that). My shins and lower legs are always covered in various bruises which as you say could be knocks that somehow I don't remember (but must have been minor ones meaning I at least bruise extraordinary easily) and I get super-cold feet all the way up to my knees. I do know someone else who has a 'mystery illness' - they haven't thought of ME I don't think due to where the primary symptoms are, but have aspects that mean it could be part of it - and recently posted something about getting an earlobe bruise out of nowhere. They similary had no rhyme reason or possibility of not having noticed an incident causing it. There is a lot of weird stuff it is strange that medicine-science doesn't look into!
In my experience, those annoying brown ones seem to be pressure bruises, as opposed to "bashing" bruises. Can be caused by leaning on something too hard, for example. And I do frequently get "proper" bruises, which I know in many cases are indeed due to my having walked into something or being bashed by something when I'm not really paying attention, so I probably don't remember whatever it was by the time the bruise comes up. I also got a nasty and rather odd-looking bruise once after taking high-strength ibuprofen: the patient information leaflet mentioned it as a possible side-effect and said you should discontinue taking it if so. I don't have ME, though ...
Thank you all for your replies! I didn't return to this thread because I forgot about it: a couple of days after I posted, I had an explosion of these "bruises" on my legs (including from obviously spontaneously burst blood vessels, which hurt), which was very scary. Around the same time I also crashed with a burnout. I discussed the spots with my physician, who, after initial blood test, advised to get specific tests done a couple of months later as I also had a low-end something count in the blood. (Sorry I can't recall what exactly and am in bed atm so can't look it up.) My GP, performing the usual gatekeeping duty, didn't see the need for the tests, and wanted me to come to her office to discuss. This heavily pushed PTSD buttons, and I just couldn't do it. This was also during a surge in covid infections and no-one taking precautions against it, including medical practises. So even if I could manage to help myself going despite PTSD through the roof, I didn't want to go and risk getting covid just for the sake of an oldfashioned PTSD-fuelling GP appointment where I had to defend myself while not getting the actual problem (scary involutary dalmatian legs, now with burst blood vessels) looked at. I sent the GP a bunch of photos, so her wanting to see me in person was unnecessary as well, it could have been an online appointment. Anyway, I put all that stuff on the backseat for another time so to speak, as I got stuck and overwhelmed and I couldn't do anything about it. I still have the spontaneous "bruises", I usually have one or two somewhere, but they are currently mostly small and atm it's not on a large scale. This could be due to improvement in my body or from anti-borrelia treatment, or it can be because I'm lying down more and am more careful with tachycardia. Or something else. But I returned to this because I saw this post on Twitter, and this is exactly it: https://twitter.com/user/status/1678289029060599810
Yes, I have been tested for co-infections, including babs. (I don't know if it was for "two major strains", but I believe I got tested for it several times.) I'm still trying to get rid of bartonella.
The bruises look a bit different than ordinary bruises, they have a sort of "hazy" quality to them and look brownish with hints to purple and red. (See twitter photo's). They also don't hurt (unlike normal bruises), and take a long time to disappear. The spontaneously burst vessel places did hurt, and they were a hematoma, which look a lot sharper than the other "bruises" and are purple/green/yellow. Mistaking them for normal bruises was in the first period after I became ill: my coordination and motor skills were affected, and my cognitive function was as well. So I thought I must have bumped myself and forgotten it. But that seemed to be happening too much, and the "bruises" looked a little bit different than usual. When I got a "bruised" ear lobe, I knew I wasn't mistaken and that this was indeed happening spontaneously. I tried to get it checked out, but my GP at the time (who in hindsight was abusive) dismissed it as the tales of a hypochondriac. This is something else than the "bruises". It sounds unpleasant though, I hope it doesn't happen too often.
Ha, yes, for me it was an earlobe that made me stop doubting my observations that these occurred spontaneously. Back then I thought I had ME, and with a dismissive, abusive GP while having motor skill & cognitive issues, you think thrice about going to the doctor saying you have bruises on your legs when you're not 100% certain it's not from banging against furniture. That sucks. I didn't bruise easily, and I still don't from banging into things. (I do feel a lot of pressure from bad circulation if I bang my knee, which at one point led to a burst vessel making my whole knee black and blue from a small bang against something- so I now sit down for a short bit with my leg up immediately after when I have a knee-banging accident, to prevent that.)
The rarer ones on my arms stay brown. They're not from external pressure though, but happen when I've made an effort with my arms lifted, like trying to get something off a high shelf which I juuust can't reach, or making an attempt to wash my hair by myself, especially standing up. Also because of this, when I do try to wash my hair by myself, I do it sitting down on the floor, with my head tilted to keep my arms as low as possible, which also helps in the arm strenth it costs.
I test positive for babs, and babs purportedly can impact platelet counts, and my platelet count is usually low. I bruise easily and frequently. Some bruises I've had for years. This is a relatively new issue for me. So is testing babs-positive ( a few years). But that's me. So Babs aside, I'd still want to know where my platelets stand.
I have the same. In my case it isn't just scratches, it is old insect/midge/mosquito bites. They no longer itch, they are normal skin colour, but I have a permanent small, rough lump where they happened, as if they scarred leaving behind a memento.
